Jobserve ‘abuses market dominance’ – Silicon.com

High Court injunction

Silicon.com won an injunction last week against Jobserve.com, the UK's dominant IT jobs board, after claiming that it was abusing its market position, The Sunday Telegraph reports.

The company claims that Jobserve has threatened to bar recruitment agencies from using its service, if they signed up for a rival operation run by Silicon. Jobserve denies the accusation and will return to the High Court next week, in an attempt to get the injunction lifted.

Interesting to see how this pans out. There are more than 300 online job boards operating in the UK, dozens of which offer IT recruitment sections. But there's no service to touch Jobserve, the first online job board in the UK and, with an estimated 70 per cent share of job postings (and response), by far the biggest.

British IT recruitment agencies, many of which privately accuse Jobserve of arrogance and inflexibility, have watched with growing dismay as the service has grown ever more successful.

In an attempt to build a counterweight, ATSCO, the IT recruitment industry's trade body, decided to build its own Web site, which would advertise all the jobs carried by all its members. It put the service up for tender to 30 firms and, a couple of months ago, awarded Silicon the contract to build and operate the service.

This is a big deal for Silicon, which also gets to post the jobs on its own site. More jobs means more people means more response means more jobs means more etc. And it all means more money. It also means that Jobserve has, for the first time, a serious competitor on its doorstep. ®